Part 90: Chapter the Second: Welcome to the show, meat.

Chapter the Second: Welcome to the show, meat.
August 16, 2019-September 15, 2019

If we can come away with more than three points from our first four league games, we're in great shape. If we get three points, we'll be fine. It's entirely possible that we lose every league match, with our only win coming in the Capital One Cup. And if we lose in the Cup you'll probably see me slam the panic button.



You pompous schmuck. I hope we make you choke on those words.



I think I've found my first coaching feud in the Premier League. Mourinho powers, activate! I am the super-special one! /Sailor Moon transformation sequence.



Pym was named the best signing of the Championship last year. Fans aren't super happy to see him leave already. They should know to trust me by now.

vs. Everton, August 17, 2019
Premier League


No point in being scared of our own shadow, let's get out there and see what we can do. Everton is a good team, but we're at home and hopefully can catch them off guard. The bookmakers are saying we're favorites, which surprises me. Hopefully they know what they're talking about.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack.
Starting 11: Higgs, Youssouf, Todd, Lewis, Mejasic, Mair, Shirra, Djurovic, Thompson, Mujkic (c), Bastable.
Subs: Love, Hurst, Johansen, Simpson, Petts, Matko, Harrison.

After a hesitant first five minutes we look great for the entirety of the first half, and Everton can't cope with us. We can't convert on our opportunities, though, and let our foes escape to their locker-room with the score still 0-0. I tell the team to keep working, but after Bastable misses an easy chance we're the first to concede. Bastable makes amends for that error, earning a penalty five minutes later that Shirra converts to tie the game. We keep attacking, searching for the winning goal. We don't find it, but Everton does, and they take a victory thanks to their efficiency in front of the goal. Credit has to also be given to Everton's netminder, who was very sharp today. Those two factors prove the difference, and we get nothing from a game where we were objectively the better side.




Wrexham 1-2 Everton



What game were you watching? We outplayed you, twerp.



This is a very good sign. We'll see how high our attendance is when we're struggling to avoid the drop in five months, but if we're consistently selling out our stadium it means we might build a new one or expand the current one. I'd prefer to build one, if just for the corporate amenities we could add, but the Racecourse Grounds can have up to 13,000 seats added to it.



Wow, I didn't expect that much of a jump. That's also a very good sign, it means that we're likely to have at least 10,000 fans per home fixture.



I love being in the Premier League. It's so satisfying to see us make huge amounts of money and compare it to the tight margins we were running a few years previously.




I feel like I just watched a con go wrong. This happened over the course of two days, it's the fastest I've ever seen a takeover fail.




He ain't the brightest pebble in the box of rocks.




I've been saying that Wigan are going down at every opportunity to put more pressure on their players. Apparently their coach agrees with me, which makes me wonder why he took the job.

At Manchester United, August 24, 2019
Premier League


Manchester United is the jewel of English football, and one of the best teams in the world. We're in their house, and their house is a fortress. This could be a humbling welcome to the Premier League. Simpson is playing, he's not good enough to play much at this level but we need his leadership.



Just look at that team. What an embarrassment of riches.

Starting Formation: 5-4-1 Defense
Starting 11: Higgs, Youssouf, Lewis, Todd, Durand, Djurovic, Simpson (c), Shirra, Mujkic, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Mejasic, Vaillant, Mair, Petts, Matko, Bastable.

Manchester makes us look like the fresh meat that we are, scoring after less than 30 seconds pass. They add a second after fifteen minutes, and spend the entire game peppering our goal as if they were on the training field practicing their offensive setups. It's a miracle that the scoreline is Mujkic feels a twinge in the second half, but is able to keep playing. In the second half I have to switch us to our counter formation in order to try and create at least some offense, as we've been pinned in our third the entire game. Man U caps the route in the 75th minute with a goal from a corner, of which they had 19 (19!) on the day. We're a long way from competing with their ilk, they scored as many goals as we had shots, and we were lucky to keep it that close.




Man United 3-0 Wrexham



If he's back in two weeks he'll miss only two games.



I told you we were thin on the wings, we really cannot afford injuries to our players there.



It's going to be nice to be able to treat an opponent like Manchester United treated us. The difference in quality is about the same between Man U vs. us, and us vs. Crawley.



I'm confident in our victory, even if two years ago we were in the same league as Crawley the changes across that time in our relative quality is nothing short of remarkable.

At Crawley Town, August 27, 2019
Capital One Cup, Second Round


This is a refreshing change of pace.



Crawley Town is, as I've said, not good. There's zero reason to fear them, and there's zero reason to not win this match. Their second best player is Graeme Underwood, who you might recall from an unsuccessful loan stint with us when we were in League Two. He's not that much better now. I'm bringing up Rouissi to take Mujkic's spot in the lineup, I want to give him low pressure opportunities to get some game time. Cosimo De Blasio is on the bench backing up Bastable for the same reason.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Love, Hurst, Lewis, Vaillant, Troelsen, Petts, Bailey (c), Thompson, Rouissi, Bastable.
Subs: Higgs, Durand, Johansen, Simpson, Walley, Matko, De Blasio.

We nearly give up another early goal, but Crawley's players aren't Manchester United. From there we dominate the game, creating nearly a dozen chances for a goal. Yet it takes until the 70th minute before we can take the lead, and from there we add a second to seal the victory. It's clear that we've played too many minnows recently, the team is confused and demotivated by my post-game admonitions, they don't seem to understand a 2-0 victory against Crawley is nothing to be proud of anymore.

Man of the Match: Rocky Bastable




Crawley 0-2 Wrexham



Did he watch the same game I did? Their only real opportunity to score came in the opening minutes, and we were as likely to win 6-0 as 2-0.



That's a record unlikely to be broken soon.



Not the kindest draw, but still a winnable match. I'm hoping to make it deep into either the FA Cup or Capital One Cup this year.



Every Premier League team is chock full of national team players for various and sundry countries, so international breaks are the norm. Have I mentioned that I love being in a top league?



Hah! I don't even have to withdraw him from the team. Now that I know how to pronounce it properly, it sounds vaguely like a Yiddish term. Everyone in my shtetl plotzes over Mujkic's punim. Maybe because I keep referring to him in my head as Mujkic the boychik now.



Not bad for a secondary sponsorship. The reason to build a new stadium is that it improves the number and value of sponsorship deals. Which makes sense, we want the fanciest corporate suites in Wales to attract good honest businesses like RBS instead of Wonga. You can tell that RBS are the more genteel class of crooks by how fast Downing Street rushes to bail them out when things go pear shaped.



We're making money hand over fist. Last month saw a £2m profit, this month saw £1.5m. Even better, as a fan trust we don't have to worry about the balance being given to the owners as a dividend. If the club has a non-sugar daddy owner and ends the year with a big bank account they'll often dividend themselves tens of millions of pounds, leaving you that much poorer. A club owned by a fan trust has it's equity split amongst the tens of thousands of club shareholders, and they pay money into the club rather than extract profits from it. As such, when we finish the year with £20,000,000 in the bank we're going to be in great shape.

vs. Crystal Palace, September 1, 2019
Premier League


We should have topped Crystal Palace in our FA Cup matchups last season, and they've only gotten worse since while we've improved. Winning matches such as this one is a good way to avoid digging too deep a hole to extract ourselves from.

Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Higgs, Youssouf, Todd (c), Lewis, Mejasic, Mair, Petts, Djurovic, Matko, Thompson, Bastable.
Subs: Love, Hurst, Vaillant, Troelsen, Shirra, Rouissi, Harrison.

Right winger Daniel Matko is forced out of the game when he's assaulted by a Crystal Palace player. No card is given, and I have to bring Rouissi on. When Rouissi takes slight injury in the middle of the second half I have to keep him on the field as no one can replace him. When Petts goes down late in the second half, my suspicions that Crystal Palace is trying to knock our players out of the game harden. They finish with 20 fouls. We're lucky that neither injury was serious and that Mujkic will be back in time for the next game.

But besides that, how was the game Mr. Brown? It was good. Bastable put us ahead shortly before the end of the first half, and Dejan Djurovic added an insurance goal five minutes into the second. A third goal, by Thompson, was disallowed in the closing minutes, and we took a win from a solid but unexceptional performance. We were fortunate to keep a clean sheet, Palace had chances of their own, but on the whole I was pleased with how the team performed, and we've got our first Premier League victory under our belt.

Man of the Match: Dejan Djurovic




Wrexham 2-0 Crystal Palace



I don't actually want him getting into too many games. If you play teenagers too much they'll get an inefficient distribution of skills, and you'll see them “burn out.” That is, they will reach their maximum PA but without the optimal shape of those abilities to make them as good as they could be. This can be rectified some by continued training after a player reaches their maximum potential ability rating, they'll lose points in some stats while adding them to the specific areas that you're training, but it's still not ideal. Rouissi is several years shy of being ready for a lot of action, and I'd like him to see less than 750 minutes of first team game time over the course of the season.



The youth squad is already stuffed to the gills, so unless I see a five star wonderkid I'm not going to bother bringing more.



Registration always closes the day after the transfer window.



Which just closed.



We can still register free transfers so long as we have room on the team, but everyone who's currently registered is locked in and can't be removed until the January window.



The amount of money that gets sent between teams for transfer fees is mind boggling. The only thing I can think of that is remotely similar is the now-defunct posting system for Japanese baseball players coming to the United States, where the record posting fee was more than $50,000,000.



We're actually middle of the pack for transfer spending, with a net £2m expenditure.



Our salary is just £12m a year, however, which would place us only 14th in the Championship. I'm a little confused at first, the combined wages and transfer spending should leave me with £3m more than I have. Then I remember that agent fees in the Premier League are gigantic, clocking in at £1.4m so far this season. That's still £1.6m of missing money, though.

I'm starting to think I screwed up in editing the budget when I realize the missing money has gone into the club coffers, the club is still taking 20% of the transfer fees we earn. 20% of £8m (the amount we made from selling players) is £1.6m.



We've been fortunate to avoid serious injuries to players on international duty thus far.




He's 18 years old, and already one of our best players. He's going to be an amazing talent for Scotland for the next decade and a half. With McGoon and Scott Scott, Scotland's got a mini-golden generation going on thanks to us.



These have been in the works for a literal year. The Tom Cannon Memorial Heated Youth Barn and Exercise Yard is now rated Average (10), after starting at Poor (4) five years ago.



Back in plenty of time for the next match.



And when he screws up and lets someone past him his Acceleration of 18 and Pace of 16 should let him catch up quickly.




Being fatherly doesn't work with players I haven't raised since they were teenagers.



I'd never even heard of this guy. There's rumors flying around about us being in the market for a winger, though, which is fair enough.

At Southampton, September 14, 2019
Premier League


Southampton are slight favorites for this one, which is as it should be. But we have every chance of taking a point away from St. Mary's Stadium if we play well. It's a pity that the takeover attempt collapsed, having Southampton settling under the thumb of a new owner would give us a better chance of picking up a result.

Starting Formation: 4-4-1-1 Counter
Starting 11: Higgs, Hurst, Lewis, Todd, Durand, Matko, Simpson (c), Djurovic, Mujkic, Petts, Bastable.
Subs: Love, Mejasic, Vaillant, Mair, Bailey, Thompson, Harrison.

The Saints spend the first thirty minutes holding our heads under the water, and take the lead. Seeing no success from our counter-attack, I put us on the offensive. It was the wrong decision, and we give up two more goals in the first half. Stewart Lewis defines our ineptitude on the day by scoring an own goal just before an hour of play has elapsed, and we take a heavy defeat. Worst of all is that we fail to score any goal of our own despite plenty of chances. On another day this would have been a much closer game, but we deserve our defeat after an abhorrent opening frame. To add insult to injury, one of the goals is scored by our former youth striker, Adrian Read.




Southampton 4-0 Wrexham




When you praise another team's players they might respond. They might also start to like you, which makes them easier to sign in the future. In this case I just had to give Knight credit where credit was due after he drubbed us.



That could have gone worse. We should have gotten something out of the Everton game, we won the Cup match as we needed to, and other than looking like a flock of sheep corralled for sheering at Old Trafford we've proven that we deserve to be on the same pitch as the other Premier League teams. We're not in the relegation zone, and our upcoming matches are somewhat easier, with home games against Derby and a badly slumping Newcastle our best chance to pick up more points over the next month.